Dethroning King James

NBA The San Antonio Spurs are focusing their defensive efforts on shutting down LeBron.

NBA The San Antonio Spurs are focusing their defensive efforts on shutting down LeBron.

June 10, 2007|SAM SMITH Chicago Tribune

SAN ANTONIO -- It's not like they actually said it. But going into Game 2 of the NBA Finals on Sunday night, the San Antonio Spurs, in effect, issued a challenge. You think you can beat us with Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Drew Gooden, Larry Hughes, Sasha somebody and a guy named "Boobie?" Well, go ahead. They are concentrating that much on stopping LeBron James. "Allen Iverson is the only other guy I can remember us doing something like that for," Robert Horry said. He's referring to the defense set for James, which was the only truly Jordanesque thing about him in a 14-point, six-turnover opening game loss. The Spurs treated James like the self-described "King James" he likes to be called and knocked off his crown and then kicked it away when he tried to retrieve it. Everywhere James looked and went there seemed to be Spurs. Jumped on the pick-and-roll, pushed side to side, his driving lanes cut off as Larry Hughes shot 1-of-5, Donyell Marshall 2-of-5 and Zydrunas Ilgauskas 1-of-8. "The shooters have to make shots to open things up for him," Marshall said. When James did get the baseline, Spurs converged on him like attackers at the Alamo. (Sorry, it's a required reference each time in San Antonio.) "That has been happening to me all playoffs," James said. "They have double- and triple-teamed me at times. Made me give up the ball and tried to deny me from getting it back. I'm going to have to make the easy pass and rely on my teammates a bit more." Actually, James was a party to his issues as he reverted to the practice that often stalls the Cavaliers even more. James has a tendency to overdribble, pounding the ball and looking for an opening, which stops everything else and makes it easier for the defense to zero in on him. Even Cavs coach Mike Brown, in a rare rebuke of James, said after "he has to do a better job at making sure we move the ball. Pound, pound, pound, dribble, dribble, dribble." The Cavs do struggle at times with getting James to give up the ball quicker, and he probably will do that in Game 2 to disturb the Spurs' sets. The Cavs were tentative going to the basket in the opener, as they were in the first two games in Detroit. They were trying to finesse the ball up instead of trying to draw contact. Tim Duncan had five blocks against them, and Detroit's Rasheed Wallace had seven in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals. Will a change in strategy help the Cavs? The Cavs' worthiness is not something they talk about. Because there are close relationships between the staffs and organizations of the Spurs and Cavs both are highly complimentary of one another. But even though this is the NBA Finals, one could make the case the Cavs are the worst team the Spurs have played in this postseason. Certainly, the Suns are better, a 61-victory team that perhaps isn't in the Finals only because of a controversial suspension when the Spurs and Suns played. The Jazz? With Deron Williams playing the way he did, Carlos Boozer, Mehmet Okur and Andrei Kirilenko and winning its division in the rugged West, they would seem far more talented. Although Denver, the Spurs first-round opponent, won five fewer games than Cleveland with 45, it has Iverson, Carmelo Anthony, Marcus Camby and Nene. It could be argued easily that the Nuggets are a much deeper team. Other than James on the Cavs, only Ilgauskas has been an All-Star, and some would say he only made it because two centers are required and the East has so few of quality. Other than James, is there one Cavs starter you would want to trade for to have on your team? Maybe Drew Gooden. Maybe Ilgauskas. Larry Hughes is better when not hurt, though he is annually. For the last two weeks, rookie Daniel "Boobie" Gibson has looked like the team's second best player. So is this Cavs team one of the worst ever to get to the Finals? Yes, they defeated a good Pistons team in the conference finals. But in the two previous playoff rounds they played .500 teams, one without its two best players. "First thing I read was 'Spurs outclass Cavs,"' Marshall said about his reading of newspapers after Game 1. "They won one game. Maybe we got caught up in the hype a little bit. I thought we came out and played well, took a (second-quarter) lead. "If we would have come and upset them in Game 1, it would have been, 'The Spurs are not really the team we thought they were.' You have criticism one way or the other. We'll come back with confidence." But feeding the doubters is the way the Cavs lost. It wasn't the margin, only 85-76, but rather that they weren't competitive in the fourth quarter when the Spurs led by 18. In the first game of the 1985 Finals, the host Celtics trounced the Lakers, 148-114, but no one believed the Lakers were undeserving. Los Angeles ended up winning the series in six games. But one keeps looking at that Cavs' lineup with no one but James averaging more than 15 points. Hughes is second at 14.9, but in the last nine playoff games, he is shooting 19 of 69 (27.5 percent) while averaging 6.3 points. Ilgauskas was next in the regular season at 11.9. Those kind of numbers produce some bad Finals' memories.